This company sells all across the U.S., and sells products from a variety of manufacturers. They have a direct sales force, a physical showroom where customers can purchase in person, and a web presence where customers can place orders directly via their website.

They use inventory item category 1 to store the manufacturer of each item. This field is used because they can either purchase items directly from the manufacturer or a wholesale distributor. Although the vendors change, the item's manufacturer does not.

Some higher-end manufacturers require their customers to sell a certain amount of product(s) to maintain the privilege of selling their product(s). This being said, although monitoring sales by customers...